Permaculture rests on three ethics: earth care, people care, and return of surplus. All three must work together. Without feeding excess biomass back into the system, it collapses. Industrial agriculture and extractive industries like those in Appalachia take profit without giving back, violating the core principle.
Chapters
You have to look at all the money that was made from our land that's no longer here. If a process that we do does not include all 3, then it is not permaculture and it does not work. Number 1 is earth care. That's caring for the planet and all living systems. That's soil, that's water, that's air, biodiversity. It's not sentimental, it's practical. You don't take care of it, you don't eat. Number 2 is people care. There's an ethic in permaculture where we actually take care of people. We create jobs that are meaningful, where there's shelter, There's food, there's protection, there's connection, there's joy, there's community. That's a part of permaculture. And then 3 is return of surplus. You return the excess or the system doesn't work. Most of the crops that we grow should be perennials, but we have industrialized them to make them annuals because we plant, we harvest. We used to allow the last harvest to fall on the ground and feed the ground. Look at the past 70, 80, 90 years of Appalachia, of West Virginia, with companies that come in and extract and then leave, and they don't give back to the people.
